


calgary

by viscrael



Series: trans girl pidge hc [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Male Homosexuality, Pre-Canon, Trans Female Character, Trans Girl Pidge, matt being a good big brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 03:08:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8040091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: Matt figures it out before Katie does.





	calgary

**Author's Note:**

> someone on instagram tried to tell me i cldnt hc pidge as a trans girl and it made me angry so i wrote this
> 
> this is unedited af also hey voltron fandom this is my first fic here yay

When Katie is eight, her family goes to a wedding.

One of her parents’ old college buddies is getting married, and the Holts are invited. Katie doesn’t really understand the _point_ in going—it isn’t like her mom and dad are still best friends with the people, after all, and in her little girl eyes it isn’t anything but boring. She doesn’t know anyone there but her family, and people keep tripping around her, forcing her to scuttle out of their way. They wait in the church for what feels like _hours_ for the ceremony to start, kicking her legs and nudging her elbow into Matt’s side for something to do.

He smiles at her, but it’s clear that he’s just as bored as she is. It isn’t until music starts playing that she calms down, her mother putting a hand on her knee to still her kicking.

“She’s beautiful,” Katie hears her mother whisper, staring in awe at the woman walking down the aisle. The bride carries a bouquet of roses, an arm hooked around her father’s, but that isn’t what caught Katie’s eye: it’s the dress.

Matt mumbles something to her quietly, but she isn’t listening; she’s looking, the same as her mother, her eyes wide as something stirs in her chest.

 

\--

 

“As your big brother,” Matt says, “it’s my job to protect you.”

Katie pushes him away halfheartedly, rubbing at her cheek harshly with her other hand. She’d stopped crying some time ago, but her knee still bleeds, and she doesn’t like him fussing. “No it’s not,” she tells him.

“It is.”

Ignoring him, she pulls herself off the ground, trying to hobble her way back inside to get the First Aid kit on her own. Matt trails behind her, _it wouldn’t hurt if you’d just let me carry you_ and _I really don’t mind_ following her, but she doesn’t respond.

It isn’t that Katie doesn’t like her brother, or that she doesn’t trust him to help her. It’s the weirdness that followed what he said. _To protect you_. Brothers are not meant to protect brothers, she thinks, even _if_ Matt has always been just a little effeminate, a little a bit different than the other boys Katie knows.

 

\--

 

At school, she gets a crush on a boy.

His name is Julius. She doesn’t know much about him except that he’s smart and he laughs at her jokes and he likes science. That’s all a ten-year-old _needs_ to know, really.

He sits by her at lunch one day. She comes home that day in a good mood, and Matt raises an eyebrow at her.

“What’s up with you?” he asks, not unkindly. She shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just had a good day.”

“You’re _sure_ that’s all?”

Her stomach twists at his insistence; she doesn’t want to tell him, and she’s suddenly reminded that this is not what’s Normal. She loves Matt, and Matt loves her, but what if she told him and he told their parents? And what if her parents didn’t like it? What if they didn’t want Katie hanging out with Julius anymore?

Matt catches on to her anxiety. He nudges her elbow with his. “I’m glad it was a good day, then.”

“Yeah, me too.” But she isn’t so sure, and her good mood has disappeared.

 

\--

 

Katie doesn’t get a crush on any other boys.

 

\--

 

Christmas becomes a nightmare.

She doesn’t know why. But every time she hears her name it sounds like nails on a chalkboard or the shrill of a fire alarm or the bird that screeches outside her window every morning. She hears it all the time of course, but it’s especially worse during family gatherings.

She can handle her mom and dad and Matt saying it every day, even if the name _does_ sound distant and wrong coming out of their mouths, but not her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and second-cousins saying it. Especially when some relative doesn’t remember her and her mother comes up behind her, setting her hands on Katie’s shoulders, and says _this is my youngest son_ and that _name_.

It hurts much more than she thinks it should.

She tells Matt she wants to start going by her middle name.

 

\--

 

The middle name doesn’t sound much better.

 

\--

 

A girl moves into the house across the street from the Holts. She’s tall and a year older than Matt and she wears pleated skirts and overalls and big, oversized jackets that somehow still look good on her. Her hair’s long, long enough to skim the hem of her shirts. Her name is Katie.

The middle name’s wrongness increases, but there’s a lightbulb moment.

 

\--

 

Matt figures it out before Katie does.

“You don’t like being a boy?” he asks one night, their door closed and their parents asleep down the hall. They still share a bedroom even though Matt is sixteen with a driver’s license and Katie will be twelve-and-a-half in a week.

Katie doesn’t look at him. He loves her and she loves him, and he was the one to bring it up in the first place, but—it feels weird. Wrong. To talk about it.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Do you like boys?”

“What does _that_ have to do with anything?”

Matt blinks. Katie falls back, curling her arms around herself protectively.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“I do,” Matt says.

“…What?”

“Like boys.”

“Oh.”

They’re quiet after the confession. Outside, a police car speeds past their house, siren blaring and piercing the silence.

“Does that bother you?” he finally asks, but he looks like he already knows the answer. There’s no hint of discomfort to him. His shoulders are relaxed, his legs crossed where he’s sitting on the ground across from her. The siblings have a habit of sitting here in front of their shared window at night when everyone else is asleep, and talking. It’s the only time either of them is completely okay with secrets.

Secrets like these.

Matt likes boys and Katie doesn’t want to be one.

“No,” she says.

“Good. So…do you like girls then? Or both?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” she mumbles. Her hair is short, short, short—nothing like Katie’s from across the street, but she tugs at it at the nape of her neck anyway. “I’ve… _liked_ a boy before. But—but that’s not why I don’t want to _be_ one.”

“So you _don’t_ want to be one, then? For sure?”

Katie doesn’t respond. She’s staring at the floor, her knees pulled up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them. She feels bulky, uncomfortable in her own body—well, she always ( _always_ ) does, but it’s worse now, it’s unbearable now, the same way that _name_ is worse at Christmas.

“Do you want to be a girl?” Matt asks, his voice quiet.

As always, he already knows the answer.

 

\--

 

They go to sleep that night without a name for it, but Katie feels a little bit safer after she cries it out. Matt doesn’t even bat an eye, acting like he’s known the truth his whole life—the truth that his brother is not a brother; the truth that she’s different.

Maybe he has. Katie doesn’t want to ask.

 

\--

 

Her brother comes home with the name a day later, pulling Katie aside after school to let her know.

“I asked about it,” he says, and she screeches _you did WHAT_ before she can stop herself because that was meant to be _private_ —

“I didn’t tell anyone it was about you,” he assures, his hands raised to placate her. “I just mentioned it to my counselor, you know, during lunch. I asked if she had any of those informative pamphlets like they have about HIV, and she gave me one.”

He pulls the pamphlet from his bag. _TRANSGENDER: What It Means_ greets them, covered in pink, blue, and white with a Mars and Venus symbol stamped on front. He produces another one, too, this one titled _Gay and Lesbian Teens_.

“I got this too,” he says. “I didn’t want her calling home worried or something, you know?”

“But if Mom or Dad finds these in our room—“

Matt shrugs. “I need to come out at some point.”

Katie’s eyes well with tears. It’s reminiscent of last night, but no darkness covers her this time. Matt pulls her into a hug, the papers squished between them.

“Thank you, thank you,” Katie mumbles.

Matt still hears it, and there’s a smile in his voice when he says, “Don’t worry about it. That’s what big brothers are for.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> i might make this into a mini series if anyones interested? eventually itll get up to date w/ canon...i plan to go thru the kerberos mission, pidge having to disguise herself for the garrison, etc etc etc and if i do ill end up including either trans lance or trans keith (...or both) but Truly, who knows


End file.
